Prediction Open · timeframe May 2031
Costolo: SpaceX will acquire Tesla
“I think SpaceX, I am one of the people that believes SpaceX will buy Tesla.”
Prediction Held up
Costolo: SpaceX could be worth over $2T on day one
“When SpaceX goes public, and I think it'll actually, could you could, it could end up being worth over two trillion dollars on day one, whether that's a fake price or not.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Costolo: OpenAI commitments exceed $1T without revenue to back them
“When you go and run on the numbers, it adds up to crazy over a trillion dollars worth of commitments that don't have the, you know, and you don't see the revenue model or growth yet to back it up.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Costolo: OpenAI will pop on IPO day but face intense quarterly scrutiny
“It will still do really, really well on day one because people are going to be like, it's the next stigma. It's the next Cerebrus. I can't, I, you know, I haven't been able to buy secondary before I want to be an investor. You have to own one of these things, …”
Opinion
Costolo: Nikita Bier's product instincts rival Kevin Systrom and Evan Spiegel
“Nikita has an extraordinary instinct for product that I think only, I would say, Kevin Systrom and maybe, you know, Evan Spiegel with his initial instinct for Snapchat stories are comparable.”
Insight
Costolo: Advertising is undefeated because ARPU far exceeds premium subscriptions
“Advertising is undefeated as a business model. What you end up finding is that the average revenue per user is just much, much higher than you can get from a premium subscription.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Costolo: AI data centers will stall without public buy-in from CEOs
“Again, writ large across the country, it goes back to the Darios and the Sams, et cetera, need to start painting a picture to the country about why this is great for us, or a lot of these data centers aren't going to get built.”
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2036
Costolo: Space data centers are at least 10 to 12 years away
“It's let's at least let's at least agree that it's at least 10 or 12 years away.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Costolo: Anthropic initially planned to keep Claude Code internal
“You know, they weren't even initially gonna release Claude Code. I mean, they initially, my understanding from folks inside Anthropic is we were just gonna be like, wait, this is like a huge competitive advantage. To be able to increase the rate of speed with …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Costolo: Mega-cap IPO distributions will reignite early-stage VC fundraising
“You've got all these university endowments and, Venture LPs, et cetera, that haven't had their big liquidity events that are now gonna be, you know, flush with distributions of SpaceX and Anthropic and OpenAI that are gonna be able to turn around and pour a bu…”
Opinion
Costolo: Small AI startups like Granola vastly outperform Apple Siri
“It's surprising how Siri for, Siri or iMessage, for example, have been so impossibly slow to keep pace with what appear to be things that AI startups with 10 or 12 people have been extraordinarily successful at, like text to speech or speech to text. Granola, …”
Opinion
Costolo: Meta's rolling layoffs are surprising given Zuckerberg's strategic sharpness
“What I would say specifically about Meta is Mark is extraordinarily sharp and a strategic thinker, and the thing that I've been surprised about is the little bit of the death by a thousand cuts on the layoffs.”
Opinion
Costolo: Anthropic would benefit greatly from IPOing before OpenAI
“I think it would be great. I think it would be great for Anthropic if they can go first.”
Insight
Costolo: First mega-cap IPOs will soak up limited institutional liquidity
“Again, another, another advantage to going first and, or going second and not going third is there's not infinite capital out there. You're going to want to be in, you know, one or two of these things, and then probably, probably not all three Although we'll s…”
Opinion
Costolo: Twitter's text posts are extraordinarily resilient against TikTok and Reels
“I think Twitter's text posts are, have been extraordinarily resilient. It was like, it's like this, you know, it's ability to survive The changes in the way people use TikTok and reels and social media.”
Prediction Held up
Costolo: Elon Musk will become the first trillionaire
“Elon's gonna be the first trillionaire.”
Insight
Costolo: Founders going public must prepare teams for baseless 15-20% stock swings
“My advice to people who are having taken a company public before and are about to do it is you need to prep the team for, hey, we're about to go into a world where the price of the stock can change even though nothing particularly happened today. Like the stoc…”
Assertion Supported
Costolo: Twitter stock dropped on MAU misses despite beating revenue and EBITDA
“We could even have beat top line And EBITDA. And grown, you know, bottom line more than we said we were going to grow it. But if we missed an MAU number, the stock would be down.”
Dick Costolo